Stephen F. Olford: Expositor Of The Word
By Roger D. Willmore
Stephen Olford will always be remembered as an advocate of expository preaching. In 1993, while serving on the staff at Olford Ministries International, I had the opportunity to interview Dr. Olford. I asked him to address his greatest concern for the modern church. He said: We are here in Memphis in our small attempt under God to try to encourage pastors to come back to expository preaching of God’s Word in the power of the Holy Spirit, because I believe that when the Word of God is proclaimed everything else flows from that. All of the evils I could talk about that I fear today, such as liberalism, humanism, syncretism and what Carl Henry calls ‘naturalism’, all of these evils are making an impact upon the church, headed by the devil and his minions. While all of that is true, there is only one thing that will drive that back, and that is the preaching of God’s Word.3
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From the early years of his ministry, he always followed the expository model. Whether preaching in a city wide evangelistic campaign or the Keswick Convention in Keswick England, or in his church, his preaching was always the exposition of the Scriptures. During his years at Calvary Baptist Church he preached through the Book of Romans Sunday by Sunday for a total of 52 sermons. I have heard him say that the joy of his heart was to go to the pulpit on a Sunday morning and say: Turn in your Bible to Romans chapter 8 and verse 12, last week we ended with verse 11. He was fond of reminding us that he did not have to tell a catchy story or a humorous joke to get his people’s attention.
At the National Conference on Preaching in March 2004, Olford addressed the subject of preaching to spiritual needs, not ‘felt needs’. He said, “Modern ministers are more often prone to preach in a way that panders to the self-centered ‘felt needs’ of people while ignoring their deepest, eternal needs. Ministers must expound the Bible as God’s inerrant and eternal Word. So much preaching today is about ‘felt needs’. This type of preaching is nothing but pandering to the subjective needs of the human heart. Only the Holy Spirit can address real needs. Churches in America are hemorrhaging, losing upwards to 50,000 people each Sunday at the hands of a watered-down gospel that has failed to enliven their hearts with a steadfast, Spirit-wrought faith.”4
Olford believed that the Bible was relevant and that when systematically preached the Word of God would speak to each and every need of man’s life. This was a work he entrusted to the Holy Spirit.
Where did Stephen Olford’s power and passion in preaching come from? How did he acquire these spiritual qualities? For one thing, he believed that ministry issued out of life. He would tell preachers, “God is more concerned with who you are than what you do, and if who you are does not please Him, then what you do is virtually useless.”